NYMA:
Mother Always Said
I admit that the connection is hazy—I am still working through my own articulation of this concept—but there is a clear connection between the insistence on prescribing a way to see a text (framing) and the association of masculine or feminine identity of textual features.
I struggle with the concept that with digital/video articulations there are numerous entrances into the text; as a feminist, I recognize that this should be so. Without a path, readers/viewers are free to make of it what they will. With a path they are guided by my interpretation. If my interpretation is feminist, then the path is a good one, because readers may not “naturally” come to that path, that conclusion. Others have thoughtfully argued that our academic training leads us to be masculinist readers—we mark text.
There is no naturally. We have to be guided. Yes? No?
If “meaning thus becomes understood as something contained in a text or something that exists ‘out there’ rather than something that results when a reader finds a way to make the representation of meaning possible” (Vivian Zamel, 1992, p. 464), then it makes sense that we have to guide our reader/viewers to our meaning. We don’t create meaning together; I create it and then I share it with you. And if we’re being really scholastic about it, you judge me on my ability to think it and share it so that you reach and believe my conclusions.
To me this is a failure of our conversation.
“If God is male, then the male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination.” (Mary Daly, 1993, p. 19)
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
If the text is masculine, then the scholars are...
